Steven Chelliah is a professional Guitarist, Composer and Arranger based in New York City. He is the author of the FuzAsian book series published under Heights Music International in Manhattan. He is a graduate of the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston, holding two bachelor degrees in Jazz Composition & Arranging, and Contemporary Writing & Production.
Steven’s journey to finding the right thumb-pick was a long and interesting one. Starting off as a classical fingerstyle guitarist at 8 then transitioning to become a shred/speed guitar player at 13, then to Jazz at 18 – where he used Jim Dunlop Jazz 3 picks.
While making the decision to go back to thumb-picks after graduating Berklee 10 years ago, it was a long and hard process of finding the perfect thumb-pick that would enable him to play fingerstyle again, yet having room for the speed picking freedom that a regular Dunlop Jazz 3 pick gave him.
He first started out with regular Jim Dunlop and National thumb-picks. One day he had a dream about what the perfect thumb-pick for his style would look like..that it would be a Jazz 3 shaped pick with a holder that grips the thumb as tightly as a regular Jim Dunlop thumb-pick would do. Since there was no pick like that in local guitar stores, he thought it would have to be custom made.
One day while surfing the internet, he randomly came across Fred Kelly’s Bumble Bee thumb-pick. He ordered his first pack of 3 to try it out, and it was like finding the ‘soulmate’ thumb-pick that he’d been searching for years. It was like Fred Kelly read his mind!
Steven Chelliah has not stopped using the Bumble Bee Jazz picks for over 7 years now, and has used it for all his live shows and studio work. He calls the Fred Kelly Bumblee Thumb-Picks the ‘Holy Grail of thumb-picks…’